


Who is the Lamb?

by wirewrappedlily



Series: We Raise It Up [1]
Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Bones is an imaginary friend...who happens to live in Georgia, David McCoy listens to his son, F/M, Jim is a dream that really isn't good for Leonard, M/M, but Leonard really needs to start listening to him more often
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-12-03
Updated: 2014-03-04
Packaged: 2018-01-03 09:00:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 13,653
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1068600
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wirewrappedlily/pseuds/wirewrappedlily
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Those eyes aren’t the right blue, Bones.</i>
</p><p> </p><p>Groaning, Leonard threw himself back against the pillows, putting a hand over his eyes. </p><p>“Like I should give a good goddamn about what colour those damn eyes are when they’ll be dead--” Leonard’s throat caught, and he sighed. “I love you, Jocelyn.” He breathed to the picture, reaching for it. </p><p> </p><p>  <i>Be careful, Bones. Love is death and danger wrapped in fever and madness. Dreams are sweet until you wake up and realize your whole life’s passed you by.</i></p><p> </p><p>“Your kind of livin’ ain’t mine.” </p><p><i>Did I miss the part where you actually started living?</i> </p><p>“You’re a damn hallucination.” </p><p> </p><p>  <i>You’re an imaginary friend.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Make It Right

_“Fairytales don’t tell children that dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairytales tell children that dragons can be killed.”_

James Kirk was a name David McCoy had long gotten used to hearing. His son, Leonard, had been having dreams about him since age four. 

But seeing the bright-blue-eyed boy, just six years old, who his ten-year-old son had woken screaming about too many mornings, gathered out of the emergency medical evac unit from Tarsus IV--now a place synonymous with ‘hell hole’--was like being hit, hard. The boy was how Leonard had drawn him; blond hair, pale skin, and impossibly blue eyes. James Kirk was emaciated from the time he’d spent in hell; his skin bruised and his eyes tired. David McCoy could understand that. The instinct to heal him pushed at David’s boundaries. He’d moved heaven and earth to get Starfleet to Tarsus before they’d thought they could, because his son needed it. Because Kirk, James T. had needed it. 

“Tommy!” Kirk was twisted back, looking with huge blue eyes at another boy being brought out behind him, “It’s okay, Tommy, we’re safe now. Look at me! Just look at me!” Before David McCoy’s wondering eyes, the panicking Thomas Leighton turned his eyes on Kirk’s, and the boy’s hyperventilating breathing started to wheezily even out. “We’re safe, Tommy. You’re okay.” 

“Bannum,” David called out, “bring Tommy with Mr. Kirk into my exam room. I can take care of two birds with one hypo.” 

Jim twisted back, his forehead pulling into a scowl at him, “I don’t need no stinkin’ hypo!” 

David chuckled, sharing a look with Bannum. “We’ll just have to wait and see.” 

“Tommy, save me!” Jim cried dramatically, and Tommy giggled, curling up, his own eyes bright now as he looked between David and Jim. 

“I’ve got a son a little older than you, Mr. Kirk. I know how to speak a language you’ll listen to.” David told him daringly. “Suckers are only for good boys, after all.” 

Jim pursed his lips, “I don’t want a sucker if it means a hypo!” 

“You let me examine you and I’ll give you a sucker whether you need a hypo or not.” 

“Two suckers if I get a hypo.” Jim bargained. 

“Sold!” David cried, grinning as he raised a fist in the air. Jim cracked up, kneeling up and crawling over to Tommy’s bed. 

“Is Kevin Riley okay?” Jim asked, sitting beside Tommy on the stretcher bed. “They told me he was asleep.” 

David looked up at his head nurse, “He’s still asleep.” 

“He never sleeps this much.” Jim’s expression became pinched, “Please don’t lie to me.” 

David shot a look to his nurse, nodding to her to go find out the truth. “You’re a smart one.” 

“That’s why I was there.” Jim muttered. “Young genius-level minds.” 

David’s hands slowed over the tricorder, looking up at Jim. “From what I’ve heard...you’re smart enough to have saved more lives than a lot of grown ups I know.” 

“Kevin Riley is, actually resting comfortably. He was sedated.” David’s nurse murmured to him. 

“Please hurry up with the exam, Doctor McCoy. I need to go see Kevin and check on Stephanie and Melissa.” 

“I’m sure Miss Veran and Miss Nirar would love to have you both with them for dinner.” David told them both. 

“You’re already reintroducing food into our systems?” Jim asked curiously, trying to twist his head around to read the display on David’s tricorder. 

“Doubt me?” 

“Well, we spent two months subsisting on next to nothing, reintroducing food is going to be messy.” 

“We’ll risk it.” 

“Just so long as we’re not cleaning it up.” Jim allowed after a long moment. “What is your son’s name?” 

“Leonard.” 

Jim’s brows pulled together, “Do you call him Leo or Len?”

“Len.” David told him suspiciously. 

Jim wrinkled his nose, “What about his middle name? Mine’s really bad, it’s Tiberius.” 

“Horatio.” 

“Horatio was my favourite character in Hamlet.” 

“You’ve read Hamlet, hm?” 

“There’s more in Heaven and Earth, Horatio…Is he going to be a doctor or is he going to be in Starfleet? Because if he’s in Starfleet, there’s a huge opportunity.” 

“I’d have to consult him, but I don’t think he’s going to go for a position in Starfleet. He doesn’t like flying.” 

“It’s safe as houses! Well...my dad died in a spaceship, but I was born in one, so I’ve got mixed feelings.” 

“Do you? You seem like a very decisive young man.” 

“I’m allowed to have my foibles.” 

David snorted, shaking his head fondly as he handed Jim an entire box of suckers. Jim looked up at him mistrustfully, and David just shook his head, “No hypos right now, Mr. Kirk. I had the feeling you’d be handing out your prize to the sweet young girls awaiting you at dinner.” 

Jim’s ears turned pink, and he smiled thankfully up at him, “Thanks, doc.” 

~

David was woken by a soft alarm in the temporary rooms that Starfleet had set up to house him while he helped them deal with the influx of Tarsus victims; startled from a dream about eating apple pie with his boy at Jim Kirk’s age, the bright hazel eyes his son was already using to win over their housekeeper for cookies dancing as he told his father about the boy he was best friends with in dreams so fantastical they were hard for David to wrap his mind around. 

Jim. 

Jim was out of his son’s wild imagination. He was also the patient causing the damn alarm. 

The little devil wasn’t in his bed, snuck halfway down the ward to the room of Kevin Riley and the little girls he’d helped save, Tommy Leighton asleep wrapped around a teddy bear a nurse had given Jim. 

Creeping behind Jim silently enough that the boy didn’t notice him, David followed him to the doorway, lingering there, waving away the nurses as they came bustling in a tizzy about their charges. Jim reached out to push back Stephanie’s hair, his lips pulling up lightly, “Hey, Steph. What’s going on?” 

Jim’s small fingers caught tears from her cheeks, and Jim climbed up onto the bed, reaching over with a look of intense concentration to turn off the alarms on her biobed. 

“Do you not feel well?” Stephanie shook her head no, and Jim leaned forward, propping his chin on his hand and looking over at Melissa, Kevin, Joseph, and Clara. Stephanie shifted over, wriggling on the bed that was too big already. One by one, the other four got out of their own beds, climbing onto hers, and David viciously waved away the fresh wave of nurses, Jim sliding off the bed and going to each of their beds to turn off the alarms softly sounding. “We’re safe.” 

“My chest hurts, Jim.” Melissa whispered, her features shining with the heartbreaking reality that for the last few months, this little boy had been the only caregiver these children had known; that he’d been the only person they could depend upon. “Right here.” She laid her hand over her chest, and Jim nodded, his forehead creasing. 

“Since you ate?” She nodded meekly, and he nodded that he understood her, “You can tell the nurses, Liss, they’ll take care of us now. Until we can all go home.” 

The words didn’t soothe Stephanie, who quietly teared up, or Clara, who pulled Kevin into such a tight hug David wondered if the boy was alright. “I don’t have a home, Jim.” Kevin murmured. 

“Of course you do, Kev. We all have a home. And it’s not where we start out. It’s where we end up. We’ll have a home and a family, all of us.” 

Stephanie pulled closer to him, Melissa laying her bright red hair over his shoulder as she laid her head over his collarbone. “You can’t go back to them, Jim.” 

“Hey, Liss, I’ll be okay.” 

“Jim…” Clara leaned forward, shifting in, almost into his lap, hugging him, “please, no.” 

“I’ll be safe, Clar. I have my bones.” 

It meant something to the others, more than it did to David. But his chest twisted at the subject they were skirting; that Jim’s home was something to avoid even more than the hell they’d been pulled from. Jim turned his gaze to the doorway, and David knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the boy could see him, that he knew David was there listening, and had known all along. Turning to the latest arrival of the nurses, David scowled at them, “You put six traumatized kids separate of each other when all they had was each other to get through the trauma? Wheel Tom Leighton down here with them, and get Melissa something for indigestion--I’d suggest not something in a hypo.” David rattled off quietly, looking and sounding much more cross than he really was. “These kids have been through hell. We’re not going to sedate them, or restrain them. They’re not prisoners. They’re patients. And if they need each other, then we will not stand in the way of that.” 

David looked back through the doorway at Jim, and the boy smiled lopsidedly at him, pulling Clara and Melissa under his arms like they were teddy bears and laying back to tell the other children a story. 

~

Leonard McCoy woke up to the morning of the most important exam of his life feeling like his heart had stopped in his chest, his fingernails digging into his palms through the bedclothes bunched in his fists, and sweat beading his skin as he shuddered in the cold. His heart was racing and his mouth felt like he’d been screaming. 

Grunting, Leonard forced his hands to open and release the sheets, his chest heaving as he twisted and groaned out of the mess of fabric, looking down at himself like he expected to find himself stabbed through with the broken beer bottle he’d dreamt of; like he’d been thrown through a window and kicked bloody and fading in the shattered glass. He expected the taste of blood in his mouth and the dark smudge of bruises over goddamn broken bones. Hell, he half-hoped for it to be real, so that he could’ve stopped it--because if there was one kid in Georgia you didn’t pick a fight with, it was him. 

He remembered blue eyes glowing in the dark as the shadows closed in on the figure in the broken glass, spread out under the light of the dying street lamp like diamonds, soon to be smattered with blood. 

There was the cocky, doggedly masochistic groan of ‘that all you got?’ and there were snaps of bone under heavy boots. 

Feeling sick to his stomach, Leonard shoved the blankets away like they were the weight of the damn bed, nearly falling to the floor he was so uncoordinated in the movement. He covered long hands over his face, groaning into his palms. “Damn stupid…” He trailed off, his voice like the jagged edges of glass in his throat. He swallowed thickly, dragging himself out of his palms and looking at the alarm clock yet to go off. He wasn’t due for school for hours, and he knew sleeping was not an option. The picture beside the alarm clock made him ache; Jocelyn’s hair tumbling over his shoulder as they grinned at the camera. _Those eyes aren’t the right blue, Bones._

Groaning, Leonard threw himself back against the pillows, putting a hand over his eyes. 

“Like I should give a good goddamn about what colour those damn eyes are when they’ll be dead--” Leonard’s throat caught, and he sighed. “I love you, Jocelyn.” He breathed to the picture, reaching for it. 

_Be careful, Bones. Love is death and danger wrapped in fever and madness. Dreams are sweet until you wake up and realize your whole life’s passed you by._

“Your kind of livin’ ain’t mine.” 

_Did I miss the part where you actually started living?_

“You’re a damn hallucination.” 

_You’re an imaginary friend._


	2. Maybe I Should

Jim Kirk woke up on his twentieth birthday with a hole in his chest and a tightness in his throat. Bones had gotten married in his dreams last night, and for some reason it felt like the worse kind of heartbreak. 

Jim looked over at the anonymous woman draped over the other half of the bed, and stifled a grunt of pain, his head aching as he got up and shoved himself into his clothes as violently as he could with busted knuckles. He tucked back a curl of dark hair as he sat back on the bed, looking at the beauty. “Sorry.” 

He got up and left, his head pounding and his stomach turning. His lower lip was swollen and throbbing; and the slash in his forehead didn’t help with the hangover pounding behind his eyes. 

If there was one place he didn’t want to go, it was to his mom’s place: the day was bad enough as his birthday, he didn’t need to be there to remind her further of the day his father died to save them. 

He limped for a diner, though he was half-tempted to skip the middle man and hit a bar. Jim groaned as he collapsed in a booth, grinning, roguish and lopsided at Bettany, a waitress that had taken care of him and Sam every time Jim could get Sam to escape Frank without running away. Bettany tsked at him, cupping his cheek in her hand for a moment before bustling off for coffee and his usual. Jim folded his arms on the table, resting his face in the familiar-scented leather, letting the scents permeate him. Bettany had an ice pack she pressed to the back of his neck like an evil person before she set down his plate and cup. 

“You’re a horrible human being.” 

“I am a saint for putting up with you, Kirk. What sorry son of this town did you put in the hospital this time?” She sighed, flopping down in the booth opposite. 

“There were five guys against little old me, B.” 

“So, naturally, you bedded the girl of the one who started it.” 

Jim grinned, “You know me too well.” 

“I know how you operate, young man. I’ve been watching it since you were young enough to think that girls had cooties.” 

Jim averted his eyes adorably as she thumped him on the head with something between annoyance and fondness, sighing as she got back up. 

“You’ve got lipstick all over your face, boy. Clean up.” 

Jim jerked slightly, reaching for the napkins and shaking his head as he scrubbed at his scruffy face. 

Leaning forward in the booth, Jim tried to ease an ache down his right shoulder, pressing the ice pack to his head as he went at the food with grim determination. He consoled himself with the knowledge that if he hadn’t dragged himself here, there was a good chance Bettany would’ve searched him down and dragged him here herself, just to get something into his stomach other than alcohol. She’d given up on trying to get him to lay off the booze on this day when he’d reached eighteen: resolving to pick him back up again once the hangover made itself known if she couldn’t at least gift him with one birthday free of the memory. 

The only problem Jim Kirk had with his life away from his mother and her second husband was that he didn’t actually have a place. No flat, no house. He spent his nights with random lays he found in bars and managed to catch the eye of, or, if he got into a fight that couldn’t possibly lead to a fuck, he spent his night in the emergency room of the hospital then in the back of his car. 

As if in silent acknowledgement of his thoughts, Bettany slapped down a credit transferral, staring down at him. “One night, Jim. No back of your car, and no boozy blonde. You stay in a bed and sleep for one night. Consider it a present for me, on your birthday.” 

Jim looked up at her with blue eyes that couldn’t really hide everything, not from her. “What would I do without you, B?” 

“Die in a ditch of a hangover.” She replied simply, sighing as she took off her apron and handed it over the old-style barstools to her replacement. “I love you, kid. One night’s all I ask. Let those bruises fade a little.” 

“You know I could never say no to you, B.” Jim answered amiably, and Bettany looked at him, raising a brow. “What? I will find a nice person and settle down and give you grandbabies, I just haven’t gotten around to it yet.” 

“Sweetheart, at this rate, you’ll be in the ground before I am, and don’t think I haven’t wept over that more than you’d ever care to know.” She leaned over, pressing a kiss to his hair. 

“I love you, B.” 

“I know you do.” 

Jim didn’t linger once Bettany left, paying up and getting out like the hounds of hell were on his heels, visions of his Bones kissing a blue-eyed blonde after the ‘I do’s making him feel achy and sick. 

It made no sense: he was an imaginary friend, Bones. Nothing more. Jim could make up his mind not to have him married, or he could make him a girl for that matter...but Bones had been with him since before Jim could remember. The story of a great king and his magical best friend--a healer and a wise man, for all the king never listened to him, had made Bones come alive in his young mind. Had built a man much like the doctor that had taken care of him after Tarsus: tall, dark, and surly in caring to the point of a constant state of exasperation. It was easy to imagine: most people who stayed in orbit of Jim Kirk ended up exasperated to the point of doing everything they could to leave it. 

Jim used the credits Bettany gave him to get a hotel room, ducking into the impersonal room in the dark, not bothering to activate the lights as he shed clothes down to his shirt and boxers, crawling under the covers and bringing them up over his head. 

“Not what you wanted exactly, B, but I don’t want to be awake today anyway.” 

Jim relaxed into the bed one muscle at a time, enjoying the cold of it. He closed his eyes, wrapping his arms around the other pillow, dragging it under his body and hugging it like it could be someone who’d comforted him for most of his life. 

In his mind, Bones would hug him back, married or no. Worried brows would pull over hazel eyes and Jim felt happiness burning like acid burst in his chest at the imagining of it. “I’ve gotta let you go. I know I do.” 

_You’re a dream, so how do I let go?_

“My imagination has given me an imaginary friend that’s left me, I think it’s time to face facts that there’s really not much for me out here but being alone.” 

_Jim--_

Jim shook away from the voice his mind always brought to him, pressing his eyes closed and picturing himself alone there, wrapped around a pillow; the genius Jim Kirk forever alone on his birthday--the one day he hated above all others. 

It was some fucked up, twisted part of his psyche that had kept Bones, the imaginary friend that had seen him through the killing fields of Tarsus and the beatings of Frank alive for him. That had kept him there, at the edges, to tell him, even when Bettany couldn’t, that he was alive and loved and there was more than the screaming voices in his head telling him to give up. He was more than his mother leaving him as often as she could; he was more than Frank throwing him down the stairs. 

He hoped for sleep like oblivion; he imagined, for a moment, that he’d be found by housekeeping, dead, and he wondered if anyone would mourn him like most people would be mourned. 

Jim’s heart sank with the knowledge that he wouldn’t. That besides Bettany, there was a good chance no one would care if oblivion came to claim him. 

He shuddered, pressing his eyes closed until he could feel his lashes against his cheeks, trying to force himself to relax. 

That fucked up part of him yearned to imagine Bones burying his face in the nape of Jim’s neck, arms so tight around him it would crush the thoughts away. He couldn’t summon it. He refused to. He was a mess, he knew, there was so much mess to him that he didn’t even know where to start, but ridding himself of an imaginary friend that had been more love for him in his entire life than he’d ever gotten from anyone else seemed as good a place as any. Forget Bones. 

His mind calculated the approximate number of drinks it would take to forget Bones and he snickered to himself as the calculations immediately led to a stab of protest from his liver. 

Restlessly, he shifted over onto his back, looking up at the ceiling. Somewhere in space, the wreckage that his father had blown himself into was floating along. There were, no doubt, remembrances going on in San Francisco and news feeds flashing his father’s face over and over. 

Why this day?

Why get rid of Bones on this day?

...No. He had to, because the very thought of waiting until there was an easier day gave him an out that he’d never stop using. There were days harder than this one. Too many for Jim to think about and keep himself from spiralling into a panic attack, but the point remained: if he gave himself an out now, what would stop him on the anniversaries of his mom’s two so different marriages? What would stop him on the day that Tarsus burned itself into the heart of him? When Sam finally ran away and made it stick? When his mother told him that she wasn’t leaving Frank no matter what truth he dragged before her? 

Jim sighed, and sleep seemed to swallow him all at once. 

_Chapped lips pressed against Jim’s neck, hands gripping Jim’s waist. “No…” Jim groaned, pressing himself into the pillows._

_“Are you okay?”_

_“You’re not here.”_

_Long fingers carded through Jim’s hair, tugging gently. Bones buried his face in Jim’s hair, pulling him out of the pillows and around him from behind. Jim groaned, prying his fingers between his chest and Bones’s arm._

_“Bones, I’m trying to grow up.”_

_“Oh? Why now?” Bones uncurled Jim’s fingers, kissing his banged-up knuckles. as he wrapped around Jim from behind._

_“Because I’m fucking twenty years old today, and you got married last night. I have to let this go.”_

_“I’ve resolved to be stuck with you.”_

_“You’re married.”_

_“Doesn’t mean I can’t take care of you. We’ve been stuck with each other for damn long enough. You’re not going to get rid of me.”_

_“Take care of your wife,” Jim growled._

_“She doesn’t need me to take care of her right now, sweetheart. You do.”_

_“So?”_

_“Jim…”_

_“No, Bones. Listen to me: I’m a big boy now. I have to--”_

_“Jim, I don’t mind. And I haven’t abandoned you with your pain-in-the-ass bar brawls, early-onset hypothermia, and your insistence that you’re not a figment of my imagination, but I’m a figment of yours.”_

_“Would your wife really feel alright with you cuddled up with another man?” Jim snapped._

_“She’d have me committed if I so much as mentioned the dreams, Jim.” Jim went limp in Bones’s arms, giving up the fight entirely--worryingly, really, but Bones just pulled him in tighter. “This is turnaround, you know. You refused to leave me alone all through high school, I’m not letting you out so easy.”_

_“You’re abusive.”_

_“Uh-huh.” Leonard smoothed his hand over Jim’s ribs, sighing. “And the way I see it, we’ve been cuddlin’ since I can remember.”_

_“Get rid of me, Bones.” Jim murmured, “I’ll ruin you.”_

_“Not gonna happen, kid.”_


	3. Everything I've Got

It’d been four years since Jim Kirk had seen his Bones, and the growling doctor kicked out of the shuttle bathroom looked so much like him that for a moment, Jim wondered if he hadn’t come-to and had a conversation with Captain Pike. 

Surreptitiously doing a double-take, Jim accepted the proffered flask, his features pulling into a smirk as he took a swill. 

“Ooof. Moonshine?” 

“No, you lightweight.” Leonard McCoy growled, scowling at the blood on Jim’s shirt from the corner of his eye, “What did you do, throw yourself into a damn stampede?” 

Jim’s lips tugged on one side, “Kind of.” He looked over at the hulking figures responsible. 

Leonard followed his gaze, shaking his head, “Making friends and influencing people…” 

“Anyone can be Mister Popularity. Swig of moonshine and the sunny disposition of a half-drowned cat and all hearts are won.” 

Leonard scowled at him, and Jim grinned adorably. 

“See?” Jim pointed at Leonard’s incredible eyebrows, teasing. 

“You’re a menace.” Leonard shot him another look out of the corner of his eye, recognition just a glint in his hazel eyes. 

“Gettin’ to know me already.” Jim grinned, slapping him on the arm. 

“I’m not gonna be able to get rid of you, am I?” 

Jim shrugged, “Do you really want to?” 

McCoy grinned, shaking his head as he took a long drag from the flask. 

~

It was absolutely not real. It couldn’t be. Maybe his brain was actively tricking him about the dreams he used to have as a child; giving him a justification for how he could possibly feel like he knew the infuriating little shit that was Jim Kirk for his whole life. 

It seemed like the kind of thing that would happen to him, after everything else that had. 

Jim had imprinted on him like a damn baby duckling, but Leonard couldn’t have had it any other way. 

“Bones!” Jim clapped him hard enough on the back to send Leonard rocking forward on his feet, and the familiarity of the nickname made him feel like he’d lost his damn mind all over again. “How are you at doing keg-stands?”

Leonard looked around at him like he’d grown a third head, “No.” 

“That is not a viable answer.” 

“I am not doing a keg stand.” 

“Aw, c’mon, it’ll be fun!” Jim shoved him along beside him, and Leonard seriously hoped it was to go aimlessly walking, but the Jim he knew wouldn’t do aimless if his life depended on it. 

“I’m twenty-eight years old, dammit--” 

“You say that like it’s ancient.” 

“Jim--” 

“It’s just a little keg.” Jim held up a finger and thumb to signify how little it was, and Leonard just shot a look at him, trying and failing to stop dead as Jim urged him on like a demented, hen-pecking sheepdog. “Please? That cute brunette in our Temporal Dynamics class has an equally cute blonde friend and--” 

“Jim. No.” 

“Why the hell not?! I saw you checking out that Engineering officer, and we live together: I know you haven’t gotten laid in--” 

“Jim…” 

“--the three damn months we’ve been here. You’re backed up, man!” 

“First of all, the well being of my testicles is none of your business. Secondly, I can get my own damn dates. And thirdly, what the hell this has to do with a keg stand is beyond me, and I am not doing it!” Leonard told him, nostrils flaring and eyes wild. Jim grinned, this was his favourite look on Leonard if the number of times he provoked it was anything to go by, “Besides, you’re barely in our dorm anyway, how the hell would you know I’m not bringing girls--” 

“Bones.” Jim cut through, voice flat as a Vulcan’s, completely unamused and not buying it. 

“...Fine, but the other points stand.”

Jim cocked a brow, pursing his lips, and, as it turned out, Leonard could still do a keg stand, and Jim had no spatial perception, because it was not a small keg. 

More than a little drunk, Leonard face-planted into Jim’s neck when he came back right way up, unsteady enough that Jim had to hold him up.

“That, my dear Bones,” Jim was laughing, hand gripping one of Leonard’s upper arms, “was beautiful!” 

Leonard smiled blissfully, and for a wild moment, Jim fought the urge to kiss him. “I...I should’ve called my little girl...may-maybe Jo-Jocelyn woulda let me talk to her…” Melancholy closed down the tanned, sour-faced features, and Jim clung to his arms, aghast. 

“What?!” 

“‘Ve got...a daughter, Jim. Joanna. Sheeesh special.” Leonard slurred, “So Jocelyn t-took her ‘way.” 

“Bones, man.” Jim murmured, barely noticing the two girls pull into their orbit he was so intent on the best damn friend he’d made in his life. 

“She hates…*hic*...she hates me. I kill--killed--” 

Jim’s eyes widened as he came to where they were, that he wasn’t alone in paying attention, “Ladies, sorry, but we’re leaving. You two have a good night.” 

Jim blew them off, hoisting Leonard over his shoulders and pulling him out of the crowded din of the bar. “I...k-killed…” 

“Len,” the nickname came to Jim’s lips unbidden; he hadn’t ever liked that one, “help me walk you home, man. Help me get you back to the dorm.” 

“N-No one’s called me Len since my dad...since I killed my dad.” 

Jim didn’t freeze, but it was a near thing. Leonard sounded so broken in the drunken confession that Jim’s heart twisted in his chest. “Tell me ‘bout him, Bones.” 

“David McCoy...’e was my hero, Jim. I l-l-loved ‘im an’ I killed ‘im.” 

Jim’s eyes pressed shut, but he kept the faltering, drunken steps moving for the dorms. 

“You shouldn’t be my fr-friend.” Leonard seemed have trouble remembering how his tongue worked, but Jim just held on tighter. “Your dad died...an’ I killed mine.” 

“I don’t believe that, Bones. Hands of a miracle worker. If you couldn’t save him, Bones, he couldn’t be saved.” 

“He could, though.” Leonard was starting to sob. “Found the cure...they found the cure…” 

“Bones,” Jim murmured, helpless, “Bones, you didn’t kill your dad.” 

“I did...I went crazy ‘cause I did…” 

“You went crazy?” 

“I am crazy. I thought I used to dream about you…” 

Jim looked at him in the hazy eyes, his features inscrutable. “A lot of people dream about me, Bones.” He tried, though it didn’t sound quite as cocky as he meant it to. 

“Since I was little, Jim…” Leonard slurred plaintively as Jim got into their dorm room with some difficulty. 

“You telling me you’re my true love, Bones? We’ve been dreaming of each other for decades?” 

Bones squinted at him, grumpy to the core. Jim grinned at him, bringing him to Jim’s bed simply because it was closer to the door and the bathroom. “Wha--No. Why?” 

“Because when you need to puke in a few hours, you’ll be able to get there faster.” Jim told him neatly, sitting Leonard down and crouching before him, tugging off his boots without a moment’s pause. 

“Whoa.” Leonard slurred, falling backwards against the bed as Jim tugged. 

“I didn’t think a keg would get you this drunk, to be quite honest. I figured it’d take four or five barrels of moonshine before we got you well and truly snackered.” 

“I started ‘fore you did.” 

Jim paused, looking up at him, “What’s your usual hangover cure, Bones?” 

“More booze.” 

Jim looked totally unimpressed, bringing his blankets up around Leonard. “Yeah, let’s not do that.” 

Jim shifted, standing up with a groan, and turned to the dorm, bright eyes flicking over his mess and Bones’s tidiness. With a sigh, Jim moved around the room, grabbing up every bit of their stash of alcohol he could think of, going over to Leonard’s pockets and going through systematically, coming out with the flask triumphantly. Leonard’s hand whipped out, his snoring cutting off as his eyes snapped open. “Not happening.” 

“Oh, sweetheart, you’re so wrong about that. Greasy tacos and a gallon of sports drink is what’s waiting for you. Not another round.” 

“Like you should really talk about drinking too much.” 

“Get all that venom out now, Bonesy, or I won’t let you bite down when you--” 

Jim fell out of Leonard’s grip as a pillow smacked him hard over the side of the head. Laughing, Jim slid away, straggling upwards and dropping the flask into the bag of booze he’d collected. “Why are you doing this?” 

“Because I want to take care of you, Bonesy.” 

“Why?” Leonard demanded. 

“I just do, Bones.” Jim sighed, walking back over and pushing Leonard back into the bed with a hand in his hair. Leonard grabbed his arm, curling around it, “How much of this are you gonna remember, Bones?” 

“None of it.” 

“Then let me go, Leonard. We’ll cuddle tomorrow when you want to kill everything.” Jim murmured, petting through Leonard’s hair. “I’ll be here.” 

“Can’t when I’m sober.” 

“Then it’s not a good idea.” Jim murmured, leant forward to trace the fingers of his other hand through Leonard’s hair. “Sleep, Bones. And I’ll be here when you wake up.” 

Leonard closed his eyes, but he didn’t let Jim’s arm go. Jim made himself comfortable, carding his hand through his hair. 

Jim turned his memory to David McCoy, and he took a shaky breath, trying to call up the memories he’d shoved away. Had he made his imaginary friend in David McCoy’s image? He’d always thought he’d had his Bones before, on Tarsus, and before that. But Leonard had thrown that all into question now. ‘I used to dream about you’. Jim bent over Leonard’s sleeping form, trailing clever fingers over the junction where Leonard’s jaw met his neck, and Leonard shuddered, his fingers loosening. Jim’s breath caught, his gaze sweeping over Leonard’s lashes, the lax lines of his face, and Jim couldn’t stop himself from pressing a kiss to Leonard’s forehead, slipping his arm free while he still could. “I used to dream about you, too, Bonesy.”


	4. Beat

“I hate you.” Leonard groaned into his comm, kicking himself onto his back and groaning as his muscles protested and promptly turned back into jelly. 

From the door to the CMO’s quarters, Jim snorted, walking in like he’d been let in. He clicked off the comm efficiently as he strode over. 

“No, really, I hate you. You hack things that ought not to be hacked and you’re annoying.” 

“We used to live together, Bonesy, you know that’s not gonna work.” Jim told him softly, standing by the doorway for a moment before kicking off his boots. “M’Benga commed me that you finally got out and I nearly dropped ‘cause a part of me had hoped you’d finished and come to sleep.” 

“Why the hell are you taking off your damn shoes?” 

“So that I don’t make more noise than necessary while I take care of your pathetic self.” Jim murmured, voice soft and gentle. Leonard grunted, and made a valiant effort to turn his head and bury himself in the pillows next to him instead of under him. Jim’s hands on his arm made it rather moot. 

“What the hell do you want with me?” 

“I want to take care of you, you curmudgeonly old hack.” Jim murmured, turning Leonard over and kneeling on the bed. He put hands on Leonard’s back, and Leonard groaned despite himself, the familiarity of Jim’s hands on him making him relax immediately. “You’re maddening, Bones, I swear. You’re lucky I love you enough to make sure you don’t get crippled.” 

“You’re lucky I damn well love you enough to keep your sorry ass alive.” Leonard made an obscene groaning sound as Jim leaned his weight into his palms on the space between Leonard’s shoulders blades. There was a pop in his back, and Leonard whimpered. 

“Uh-huh. You want fried chicken, or are you still up for being healthy tonight?” 

“Ohmygod…” Jim rolled his hands over Leonard’s muscles, working at him expertly, “how the hell do you...ah!” 

“Never underestimate the power of a good back massage, Bonesy. I’ve gotten laid from these hands.” 

“My hands have gotten me laid, too, Jim; that’s not much to brag about.” Leonard replied hazily. Jim grinned to himself, pressing into Bones’s lower back until that popped, too. 

Jim was basking in the easy give-and-take between them, his thoughts turned to Leonard’s skin under his hands in other ways before he beat himself back from that train of thought like a man on fire. “I know how the surgery went, but what the hell took so long?” 

“How do you know how the surgery went?” Leonard asked hazily, like he was falling asleep. 

“Because you were on your bed, not hitting the booze.” 

“I’m not a damn resident, Jim.” 

“What had you bent over this guy for so long, Bonesy?” 

“He died...three times. Had to bring him back.” Leonard moaned as Jim worked his way up and down Leonard’s spine. “Do you do this for the hobgoblin? Is that why he likes you?” 

“Is this why you like me?” Jim reposted easily, sighing as Leonard did. 

“I like you because you remind me that, occasionally, I can actually save lives.” 

“You save my life every time, Bones.” Jim murmured, “Fried chicken, or eggplant lasagne?” 

“Both…” Leonard groaned, and Jim only smiled, sliding the blankets up as he eased away. 

Leonard’s soft snores began to ease from the bed as Jim padded for the replicator. According to Leonard, Jim had some sort of magic touch for his replicator that made the food it produced for Jim better than the food it’d produce for Leonard. Jim never commented, but it gave him a small ember of happiness in the pit of his chest. Programming in the meal, Jim looked over at Leonard curling up under the blankets, smiling to himself. Walking back over, Jim twitched the blankets higher up around Leonard’s shoulders, easing his hand down the doctor’s spine. 

Leonard snuffled, rolling his eyes open, “My head hurts.” 

“Do you need a pain reliever?” 

“No…” Leonard groaned, burying his head into the pillow. 

Jim sighed quietly, turning and getting a glass of water and a tablet from the small stash McCoy kept in the bathroom. “C’mon. Take this, then you need to eat.” 

“Jim, please, put me out of my misery by no longer being company.” 

“Once I see your ass in that seat and that fork in your hand, sure.” Jim replied easily. 

Leonard looked up at him, and it was a look Jim was accustomed to getting, usually once a year, on the anniversary of the day David McCoy died; when he’d take care of Leonard and Leonard would hate him for it. “Jim…” 

“I only get to take care of you every so often, Bones, it’s only right. Besides, with how bad a patient I am, I would expect nothing less.” Jim grinned at him, turning as Leonard took the pills and the water. 

Leonard caught his arm, though, and Jim turned back around, “Stay.” 

Jim cast his eyes up and down his CMO as if checking for injury or a gun pressed to his side. Slowly, he nodded, meeting McCoy’s eyes again. “Alright.” 

Sitting down to dinner together had been rare enough when they were living together; these days, it seemed nigh impossible. Between the scheduling Spock had metered out and the endless stream of emergencies that seemed to grip the ship all too regularly, they didn’t see each other as much as either of them would’ve liked. But spending time with Jim had always brought a sense of peace to Bones; Jim had a way of moving around him, of being near him, that was apart from anyone else Leonard had ever met. Jim didn’t get underfoot, not like other people would; it was as if he’d written himself a book of tricks outlining how to handle Leonard. Jim was a deft hand with each of the crew, but when it came to Leonard, it was as if he had some inherent kind of knowledge. Leonard shied away from the thought of the Jim he used to dream of, of how Jim _should_ know him, because they’d been together from the start. Jim was good at reading him, that was all. 

“Bridge to Kirk,” Spock’s voice sounded over the comms. 

“Kirk here.” 

“Captain--” 

“Spock, is the Captain scheduled to be on duty?” 

“No--”

“Is there a coming red-alert?” 

“No, doctor, but--” 

“Mr. Spock, the Captain requires rest, just as the rest of us do. Now, if you wouldn’t mind: we’re sitting down to dinner.” McCoy told him in clipped, stern tones. “Kirk and McCoy out.” 

Jim was staring at him, an amused smiled on his lips, “Bones, as Captain, I kind of have to--” 

“Take care of your damn self.” 

“You know, Kirk-McCoy just has such a lovely ring to it.” Leonard shot him a look, cocking a brow over a drink of scotch. 

“Jim, you ever propose to me, I’ll jab a hypo in you so hard you won’t find it for a week, I swear to god.” 

Jim burst out laughing, his grin huge and bright, “Such a romantic, Bones.” 

“Jocelyn was the one that asked me to marry her.” Leonard told him, voice tight.

Jim took that in stride, his demeanour changing, “Did...did you want to marry her?” 

Leonard looked down at his place, licking his lips, “I...I thought I did. I understood perfectly why marriage was a good idea. Now, I don’t think I knew anything at all.” 

“You loved her.”

“I thought I did.” Leonard told him heavily. “Maybe I was wrong, that’s why it didn’t work out--” 

“You loved her.” Jim repeated easily, “You’re not the one to blame for what happened, Bones.” 

Leonard looked at him abstractedly, his brows pulling together, “How the hell do you figure, Jim?” 

“Because you’re asking yourself that. You still love her.” Jim told him. 

“No. No, I don’t love her anymore. I think I stopped loving her when she took Joanna and everything else she could.” 

Leonard looked at Jim dead in the eye, and Jim had to force himself to look down, “You’re not an emptied out shell, Leonard. You never were. You came to Starfleet: you went where you could still perform miracles. You’re more than you’ll give yourself credit for.” 

“When you met me--” 

“When I met you, you took one look at me, covered in blood and bruised to holy hell, and you still picked me to be nice to.” 

“That wasn’t nice, Jim. It was hostile.” 

“I get the two confused.” 

“Judging by half your away missions and the reports made about the first contacts, so are a lot of Starfleet captains.” 

Jim grinned, shaking his head as he took up the last bite, savouring it for all it was replicated. “Do you cook, Bones?” 

Leonard shot him a suspicious look, “Why…?”

“What would it cost me to bribe you to make a proper Georgian dinner?”

Leonard looked down at his plate, “Nothin’. I’ll make you a proper dinner, Jim. Next shore leave.” 

Jim looked surprised, but ridiculously pleased. “Thanks, Bones.” Leonard shook his head. “It’s been a long time since I got a real...a real homecooked meal. Something made with love. I had this...friend, Bettany. She worked a diner in Riverside. She used to make me meals when I came in at three in the morning…” 

“When Frank chased you out of the house.” Leonard murmured, and Jim’s jaw clenched for a moment. 

“Y-Yeah.” 

Leonard pushed back from the table, reaching out to Jim and taking his hand to guide him from the table. Leonard and Jim collapsed against each other on the sofa, unnecessarily close. “I’m exhausted.” 

Jim shot him a look, “I know. Why the hell do you think I’m here?” 

“‘Cause you love me.” 

Jim snorted, grinning and laughing. “I don’t know what gives you that idea.” 

Leonard smirked back at him, and they settled in, Jim pulling up a holovid. Leonard leaned his head against Jim’s shoulder with a rough sigh, closing his eyes. Jim eased his hair flat and leaned his cheek against it, closing his own. He wanted to wrap his arms around Leonard’s shoulders, or reach down and take his hand. It was extremely true that Jim loved him; too true, really. For all Leonard felt ridiculously ancient, he was also vital to Jim, somehow; who, according to Leonard, was the most vital person Leonard knew--the most youthful. When Leonard was softly snoring, Jim slid his fingers down to rest over Leonard’s pulse, measuring his breathing to match Leonard’s soft breaths. He brought up the rhythm of Leonard’s heartbeat until he could almost hear it in his own ears. With the holovid playing to the sleeping men, Jim and Leonard had the first shared dream they’d had in a long, long time.


	5. Ignorance and Bliss

_Jim breathed in the scent of cotton, set against the inexplicable scent of a forest in winter. He didn’t know how Leonard did it, but it was absolutely him. Jim groaned, stretching out over the soft, warm sheets spread beneath him, and Leonard echoed his groan into Jim’s chest, sending vibrations into Jim’s chest._

_Skirting his fingers over a bare back, Jim pulled the warm, solid body next to him in tighter. Leonard moaned happily as Jim’s hand carded into his hair, his mouth pressing to Leonard’s perpetually-crumpled forehead. Leonard’s hand shifted over Jim’s shoulder, down his bicep, and Jim felt him actually nuzzle into his heartbeat. Leonard shifted up, hands cupping Jim’s cheek as he pressed his lips to the hollow under his jaw. Jim licked his lips, shifting his head down so that he could press his lips to Bones’s. Leonard responded, reaching up and shifting on top of Jim on the bed, framing Jim against the bed with strong arms._

_Jim hadn’t dreamt about Leonard like this ever. He knew he’d fallen in love with Bones around the time his getting married broke Jim’s heart, and realizing Leonard and Bones were one and the same only made that stronger. But in all the times since that he’d dreamt of Bones, it’d been dreams of being together in the simple ways. He’d never dared to so much as kiss Leonard in his dreams, for fear Leonard would know he loved him. But kissing those lips was like coming home; taking a breath after years of drowning. Jim was startled by the sensation, his eyes heavy as he traced his fingers over the dip and swell of what skin he could reach, while pressing as much of them together as he could._

_Kisses eased over his eyelids, and Jim’s lips curled delicately upwards, his hand skirting over Leonard’s side, up and down. Leonard rumbled, kissing down Jim’s cheek and neck. “Why do I get the feeling you’re taking my pulse with your lips?”_

_Leonard snorted, which was wholly not sexy, but Jim felt his heart expand for it anyway. “You can feel your own pulse in your lips, it’s not a good way to tell.”_

_“But you’re doing it anyway.”_

_“I am.” Leonard agreed, the words mouthed against Jim’s skin, and Jim laughed, “It’s the best excuse for keeping my lips on you.”_

_“Not the best excuse, Bones.” Jim murmured, voice turning deep. “You could be kissing me because you love me.”_

_“Love you?”_

_“You love me, Bones.”_

_“You sure about that?”_

_“Yes. And I love you back.” Jim told him easily, brushing his fingers through the fall of Leonard’s hair, idle and sweet as he stared at Jim, eyes half-mast. Leonard pulled into a slow smile, and Jim let his eyes drift closed, his lips parting as Leonard kissed him softly. “See?”_

_“You can tell I love you by the way I kiss you, huh?”_

_“And because you know what I’m thinking.” Jim told him simply, sliding his hand over the curve at the base of Leonard’s spine, squeezing him in tight._

_“It’s dark and scary in that head of yours. I’m all alone…”_

_Jim pinched his side, shaking his head. “I am a genius, you can hush.”_

_Leonard laughed, pressing his lips to JIm’s jaw. “Tell me, genius: what are we doin’ wasting time talking when we could be fucking each other’s brains out?”_

_Jim groaned, reaching up and pulling him down. Leonard kissed him, long and deep, groaning as he curled a hand around Jim’s cock. Jim writhed, licking his lips as he held on to Leonard’s hips. Jim slid his hands around Leonard’s back, moaning into his mouth as Jim’s hands memorized his skin. Framing Jim with his legs, Leonard guided Jim’s cock into him, still slick and loose from before, and Jim’s hands gripped his skin for a moment, his blue eyes fluttering under long lashes. Jim held on to him, forcing Leonard to take the time to adjust before he’d let him begin to slowly work himself on Jim’s length. Leonard kissed him deeper for it; letting Jim’s care for him fill him up with warmth. Bent over Jim’s chest, Leonard was a blanket of warmth, his cock trapped between them. Leonard’s pace was agonizingly slow, and it wasn’t until he started shaking that Jim knew he had to take over, sitting up carefully and laying Leonard out beneath him, thrusting into a rhythm carefully as Leonard moaned long and sweet, Jim’s fingers digging into his thighs as Leonard wrapped them around Jim’s back, easing the muscles under his fingertips. Jim kissed him quiet, but Leonard still looked disappointed in himself._

_“‘M too old for you--”_

_“No, you’re not.” Jim murmured, “You’re talking to the guy...who couldn’t walk yesterday because of one little horseback ride.”_

_Jim rubbed Leonard’s stubbly chin, over his jaw, smiling slowly, “It has been years since I went ridin’...” Leonard allowed, the twang sliding into his voice. Jim laughed softly, nodding._

_“See? You’re only human, McCoy. You can get sore, too.” Jim’s clutching fingers ran over Leonard’s thighs, his mouth sloppy against Leonard’s. Leonard nipped his lower lip, rubbing their noses together as Jim built into a needier pace, Leonard’s hips thrusting down to meet him as Jim buried himself into Leonard’s prostate. Sighing, Leonard arched back, bringing his legs up higher for Jim to loop his arms under Leonard’s sweaty knees, bending him nearly in two to get deeper, Leonard biting out a curse and clawing at the blankets. Closing his eyes and tipping his head back, Leonard gasped and panted as he felt his orgasm growing, cresting closer and closer until pleasure burst behind his eyes, shuddering and biting his lips as his cock pulsed sticky between them. He moaned brokenly, reaching for a kiss that Jim gave softly to him, sweet and gentle. Jim pressed his hips against Leonard’s ass, crying out as he came with a shudder, Leonard’s legs slipping off his shoulders from the sweat slick of their skin._

_Jim kissed Leonard’s lips and cheeks and chin, shaking as he kept pressed into the heat of Leonard’s body. Leonard held him close as he could, like he was something fragile and utterly precious, hushing him as Jim gasped and panted against his skin. Leonard pushed his fingers through Jim’s hair, and he sighed, relaxed against Leonard’s chest. “I do love you, darlin’.”_

_“‘S good to hear it, Bones Kirk-McCoy. I love you, too.”_

Jim snorted awake first, by mere moments. Leonard would’ve woken even if Jim’s waking hadn’t been so violent, but as his pillow startled under him, Leonard sprang upright, shaking off the dream that hung around him, heavy with promise that he ached to be realized. 

And he was aching, his cock straining against his boxers, his skin too hot. Jim turned his head to look at him, and Leonard felt himself twitch at the sight of those damnable eyes. “J-Jim…?” 

“Are you okay, Bones?” 

“I’m fine…” Leonard cleared his throat, and Jim reached towards him, only to have Leonard flinch away from him, jerking off the couch. “Jim, please.” 

“Bones--” Jim choked, reaching for him again. His chest ached as he watched Leonard back away from him, “Leonard,” Jim got up, and Leonard recoiled. 

It’d never been quite so imperative that Jim tell Leonard that he knew they’d dreamt about each other; that he thought they were connected. It was scary, in a way: Jim knew Leonard thought he’d gone insane for it, but knowing that Leonard was meant for him made it easier to court him from a safe distance; made it easier to try to soothe away some of the hurt Leonard had suffered before ever having to make a move and worry that he’d be rebuffed for all the times Leonard had been hurt. Jim had been in that dream, and he had the feeling Leonard had been with him. It was all he needed. Leonard was all he needed. But if Jim told him, would Leonard run? 

Leonard looked mistrustful; a caught fox ready to run. But he just watched as Jim eased his way forward, reaching out to touch his shoulder. Jim’s hand slid over to rest against the back of his neck, cupping gently, and Jim was kissing Leonard before he could really stop himself from doing it. Leonard startled, but Jim just held on; resolved to hold on until Leonard shook him off or knocked him out. And, as if Leonard could sense that, the next thing the doctor did was sieze the sleeves covering Jim’s upper arms--but it was not to push him off. It was to pull him in. To kiss him harder, licking into his mouth when he managed to kiss back. 

All too-short eternities later, Jim broke for air, his head spinning as he rested it against Leonard’s jaw, pulling in great lungfuls of Leonard-scented air. 

“You...you know me.” 

“I do.” Jim muttered, “I always have. I’m sorry.” 

“I don’t understand…” 

“Neither do I. But I don’t care. We’re...Bones, we fit.” 

Leonard studied him silently for a long time, his lower lip so flushed and swollen it was nearly a pout, and Jim stopped himself from doing any Kirk-maneuver that could either win the fair doctor or blow up in his face. “Dammit, Jim! Why didn’t you tell me?” 

“I wasn’t sure until...Leonard…” The look on Leonard’s face was pure broken trust. Jim felt something swoop in his chest, and he forced a breath out and sipped another in. 

“You let me think I’d gone nuts...th-the things you know about me...the way you are...it’s because of that, isn’t it? It’s because we...because I grew up dreaming about you.” 

“Bones, I didn’t think you thought about it. I thought that you’d let it go...that you’d push it away…” 

“Do you know why I only got to dream about you, Jim? ‘Cause I think I do. I think that every time you needed me, you’d picture me and I’d be there, dreaming it to be with you...but where the hell were you when I needed you, Jim? When my dad was dying and asked me to kill him; when Jocelyn was takin’ my little girl and my home and my world from me. Where were you when my whole damn life was falling apart?! I wished for the dreams, Jim! I wished for ‘em to come back so I could have...so I could have something to hold on to. But you’d already left me!” Jim’s features had crumpled, the look of stark pain making Leonard angrier. “And then you let me go on thinking that we were just friends?! That we’d just met?! You don’t get to kiss me now. You don’t get to look at me like that! You let me think I was outta my fool head, Jim! You wasted so much time, and I am so goddamn angry at you!” 

Jim finally moved, a twitch, but movement nonetheless, “I was scared.” 

“Of what?!” Leonard roared. 

“Of losing you…” Jim took a deep breath, “you got me up here, Bones. You gave me everything. If there’s one thing I can’t do, it’s lose you, Bones!” Jim took a step forward, reaching for him, and Leonard jerked back, his eyes hard. 

“This is insane--” 

“This is us, Leonard!” Jim snapped, blue eyes boring into him, “You got married and I figured out why the fuck I could never be with anyone for more than a damn night! You got married and I realized I fucking love you, a figment of my damn imagination! It's insane and fucking stupid, but it's you and it's me. Bones, you don’t know how much you’ve always mattered to me. You got me through Tarsus!” Jim bellowed, storming forward. Bones overbalanced, toppling over on the couch with a glare so intense Jim should have feared his skin melting off. "I've loved you since before I knew what love was!" 

Leonard’s fists clenched, the swing he wanted to take making him vibrate as he stared at his best friend. He turned to the door, opening it and turning back to Jim, the silence between them just serving to make it harder to breathe. 

Jim looked down and away, snatching his boots off the floor and storming out of Leonard’s quarters, his heart hardening in his chest, the pain in his throat threatening to choke him with tears. 

Leonard didn’t see Jim Kirk for over a month after that, and it was in that time that Leonard learned what being alone really was.


	6. Chapter 6

Leonard turned as Christine Chapel rushed over; his hands covered in Jim Kirk’s blood and his chest exploding with panic though he had to keep himself steady. For one month, Jim had been missing: abducted from an away mission on a supposedly peaceful planetoid. He’d been gone for a month of torture, alone, while his crew had been left damn near clueless, barking up the native’s trees when they had Romulans to worry about. 

Leonard’s arms were curved under Jim’s armpits, his hands pressing hard against Jim’s ribcage to staunch the blood pouring out from around a broken off blade protruding from Jim’s mauled skin. Jim’s eyes were open, but Leonard knew he couldn’t be conscious, Spock taking Jim’s legs and heaving with Leonard so that they could place Jim on the damn stretcher, Chapel running the tricorder over Jim’s barely-clothed body to see what else they had to deal with. Leonard already knew, because he’d been there to retrieve Jim himself, that there were phaser burns criss-crossing his back, and shallow, agonizing cuts littering his arms and chest. 

“His right ankle is broken, looks like it happened when he was first taken.” Chapel told him, going to said ankle. 

“The boot’s probably the only thing keeping the bone in place.” Leonard replied, still too busy with trying to keep Jim’s blood in his body.

“He’s got a fever...looks like a blood infection.” M’Benga reported, and he, Spock, and Leonard got Jim onto an operating table. Chapel took a step between Spock and the table before Spock could move any closer, and Leonard twisted to look at him. 

“I’ll take care of ‘im, Commander. You get those Romulans begging for mercy.” 

Spock met his gaze, a solemn nod bowing his head as he turned to take his leave, the chaos of the operating room roaring up behind him. 

Nyota was waiting for him in the medbay, wringing her hands in front of her as she waited, her features a mask of pain and worry. Opening his arms for her, Spock let her fall into an embrace, giving comfort he knew she required. “He’s survived this long.” Spock told her softly. 

“The Romulans haven’t gotten what they wanted from him, Spock. He’s the one that impaled himself.” 

“Rather than suffer the torture and interrogation, I believe Jim would find it logical to terminate the possibility of breaking, despite the strength he’d shown in his endurance.” 

Nyota sighed against his chest, letting him go and looking up with wet eyes, “Leonard’s got him now…” 

“There are no better hands for Jim’s life to be in,” Spock agreed, he offered her two fingers, and her lips quirked, her fingers pressing a desperately needed kiss against his. 

Nyota’s eyes had gained their fire back as she looked up at him, “I’ll inform Starfleet we’ve retrieved the captain.” 

“Nyota...the Romulans that took him haven’t survived the altercation.” Spock hadn’t killed them. Yet. 

Nyota looked him up and down, and nodded, her features aged, “Yes, sir.” 

In the operating room, Leonard was a man possessed, the wound in Jim’s chest creating a pocket of suction that wouldn’t release the blade. “M’Benga, get the hobgoblin: it’s too stuck in to get it out clean.” M’Benga disappeared out of the door, and Leonard and Chapel got to work, “Don’t you fucking dare die on me, you damned fool.” 

Getting the blade out of Jim’s chest was no easy task, even for Vulcan strength, but they managed, and the dance really began: the suction releasing with a fresh wave of blood, Leonard racing to stop the bleeding, his stomach twisting horribly because it was Jim’s blood that he couldn’t find the source of, an artery sliced somewhere in his chest though Leonard couldn’t find it. “Leonard, wait--” Chapel’s small hands shot out between his, clamping a vein and stopping the bleeding. He shot her a grateful look, getting a relieved nod in return. 

“Jabilo, help me with the boot and the captain’s broken ankle. Len, you know this. You’ve got the steadiest hands in the universe. If anyone can patch him up, it’s you.” 

Leonard took a deep breath, thanking every god there was that Christine Chapel existed. He put his hands to Jim’s wounds; knitting veins back together and getting lung tissue to reform. He pulled out splinters of metal from the blade and listened to the steady beep of his pulse from the biobed readouts. 

It wasn’t long until he realized he was standing over Jim, the wounds healing under the regen and Chapel standing in silent vigil next to him. “Go wash up. I won’t leave his side.” 

Leonard turned to look at her, “I...I don’t know how to fix what I broke with him, Chris--” 

“Wash up, then meet me back here. I’ll have your bourbon and glasses ready. Booze and sympathy: I can even call Nyota down if you _really_ need help.” He laughed, and nodded. 

“I think I do.” 

Christine’s features were uncommonly soft for how she usually regarded her commanding officer, and she wrapped an arm around his back, going on tip-toes to kiss his cheek, “Go on, Len.” 

Leonard went to the decom showers, a spare uniform in his office already, and he let himself take his time washing away Jim Kirk’s blood, staring down at the red as it swirled down the drain. How was he going to explain this to Christine and Nyota? How could he explain it to himself? 

Leonard found not only Christine and Nyota, but Carol as well, all three sprawled over a biobed and a set of chairs they gathered in a circle next to Jim’s bed. Christine handed him a bourbon as he sat down like the world weighed too much, and Nyota and Carol both raised their glasses, “To our idiot captain; may he never be that reckless and stupid again.” 

They all knocked back the drink like it was a shot, but Leonard hesitated for just a moment. “Alright: you know something. Spill.” Nyota huffed, sitting forward so that her elbows were on her knees. 

Leonard swallowed, sighing, “This is going to sound crazy…” 

“Yes, because life on this particular ship is just so very sane.” Carol snorted. 

Leonard’s lips pulled up slightly, and he sighed, offering out his glass to Christine for a refill as they all settled in for the story, “It...God, I don’t even know when it started...but I do remember that Jim and I were both little…” 

By the time he was finishing up the story of how he’d managed to lose Jim Kirk, Nyota had called down Galia, and Carol was quietly crying. 

“How do I fix it?” He whispered. 

Nyota took a deep breath, Galia moved over to take Jim’s hand, Christine shutting off the biobed alarms so that she could sit on the bed with him, and Carol looked somewhere between disapproving and grim, “You love him.” 

“More than I ever thought I could.” 

“Why would he have hidden that he’d had dreams about you, Len?” Nyota asked, her voice calm and steady: she already knew the answer, she just needed him to get there. 

“He...He thought he was goin’ mad, too? He--I don’t know, Nyota, it’s not like I--” 

“Len; do you remember the first time you and I met?” Nyota asked calmly. “You were being walked off the damn shuttle from Riverside with Jim holding you up.” 

Len swallowed, “I’d puked and I was still so drunk…” 

“And you know what he was doing? Laughing about the fact that you managed to puke on the guy who’d kicked his ass the night before. You were his best friend before you two managed to have a full conversation: and you were his only friend for a long time.” 

“If he knew I was in love--” 

“Did he?” Christine cut right through the rant that was coming, crossing her arms over her chest and leaning back in her seat, “Did he know you loved him?” 

At that moment, the door to medbay slid open and M’Benga walked in, pausing with huge eyes at the summit happening by the captain’s bed. He looked honestly scared, and Leonard considered it, then decided that was the safest reaction he’d ever seen from a member of the crew of this flying tin can. Everyone had turned to stare at him, and he backed away slowly until the doors whooshed back closed with him on the other side. 

Sighing, the women turned back to Leonard. “Did he know you loved him? Before that last dream, had either of you ever even talked about it?” 

“I--” 

“Len, think about what he showed you in those first dreams.” 

Leonard swallowed, looking over to Jim, still unconscious, on the biobed. “He was scared…” 

“Scared to lose you; scared to hurt us. His father died, and then his mother married an abusive dickhole,” Christine told him softly, voice oddly kind considering her words, “you two don’t just have a friendship that’s gotten him through hell; you have an entire crew of people who will lose one or the other of you if something goes wrong.” 

“No pressure,” Nyota snickered. 

“What do I do?” 

The women, collectively, shrugged, “Kiss him--” 

“Hold him--” 

“Tell him you love him and want to be with him.” 

“You two were made for each other.” 

“Honestly, the betting pool’s getting old.” Galia laughed. 

Nyota shifted, reaching for his hands and looking him dead in the eyes, “Find a way to be happy.” The others kissed his hair or his cheek and left, Carol lingering behind. 

She took the seat Nyota had vacated, reaching for his hands herself, “I read somewhere that an artist’s greatest tools weren’t a brush or a pencil, but their hands, and that it took immense courage to let anyone hold your hand when so much depended on them--because someone could so easily break them. Your hands are a gift, but so is your heart, Len. And Jim’s the only man I know who would rather die than break either.” 

She kissed his cheek, and squeezed his shoulder as she got up, leaving him to his Jim. 

Jabilo came back in, “Do you need medical assistance?” 

“No--” 

“Good, because I shudder to think what that lot could do to a man.” 

Leonard snorted, falling into hysterics. M’Benga sat beside him, shoulder to shoulder as they watched over Jim, “Had to talk to the high council.” 

“About loverboy on the bed?” M’Benga asked, picking up the bottle of bourbon and frowning at its lack of contents. 

McCoy looked at his own second-in-command, and M’Benga laughed. 

“You really thought you were fooling anyone?” 

“Bastard.” He laughed, smacking his shoulder into Jabilo’s and reaching up to rub a long hand over his face. “Meant to ask Carol who’d win the betting pool.” 

“Actually, I think the longest odds were two months in to this mission. We’re two years in and you still haven’t made a move.” M’Benga told him, chuckling, “You’d be the only winner here, man.” 

“Is it your shift?” Leonard asked. 

“Yep. You should get some sleep.” 

“I’m staying here.” 

“Then get some sleep in there.” M’Benga nodded to Jim’s biobed, “I’ll even promise not to take holos.” 

Leonard snorted, “I don’t trust you.” 

“I swear on letting Christine eviscerate me.”

“Oh, please: she’d want the pictures.” Leonard snorted. 

M’Benga laughed, clapping him on the back, “You’re damn right.” 

Leonard stood up and drew the privacy screen around Jim’s bed, sliding into bed beside Jim as he had before. Leonard kissed his neck, curling his arms around him, not breathing until Jim reacted to his embrace, nuzzling into his neck. Leonard tilted Jim’s face up and kissed his lips gently. Jim’s eyes twitched as if he were dreaming, and Leonard kissed his face, hands soft but strong against his cheeks as he breathed Jim in. 

_”Bones?” Jim’s voice echoed through his head, worried and wrong as he fell deeper asleep._

_“Jim,” Leonard sighed, pulling Jim into his arms the moment he saw him, “dammit, man.”_

_“Bones, no--n-no...you can’t be here. No. I’m dead, you can’t--” Jim cut off as Leonard kissed him full and deep, his fingers bunched on Jim’s chin, “please, no.” Jim sobbed. “Heaven should know I don’t want a figment--”_

_“You’re not in Heaven, darlin’.”_

_“So this is Hell--”_

_“No, Jim! You’re not dead! You’re not dead, and I’m dreaming with you. I saved you, darlin’, and now I plan on kissin’ you until we wake up.”_

_“What?!” Jim yelled, and Leonard was glad it was a dream for how hard Jim pushed him off, “Leonard, the last thing I remember, I was stabbing myself through with a Romulan blade they were trying to torture me with!”_

_“We found you, Jim. We saved you.”_

_“No. No, because you wouldn’t...you hate me.” Jim bit out._

_“Jim!”_

_“Don’t--” Jim stumbled away from him, and Leonard couldn’t stop himself from chasing him. “I love you, Jim.”_

_“You hate me.”_

_“James Tiberius Kirk: I love you, and I’ve loved you since before I knew what love was.” Leonard echoed the words Jim had said to him, “I’ve loved you from the day we met, and I loved you all through my damn marriage.Please, Jim. I love you.”_

_“No.” Jim was crying, and Leonard wanted to kill himself. “You can’t.”_

_“I do.”_

_“Leonard--”_

_“I’m Bones, Jim! I’m _YOUR_ Bones!” _

_Jim shook his head like a child, and Leonard fell to his knees, taking his hands, “I--You can’t.”_

_“Jim,” Leonard pleaded, “I love you.”_

_“No, you just think you do.”_

_Jim pulled his hands out of Leonard’s, turning and running towards a light Leonard couldn’t see past. “JIM!”_


	7. There's a Light On

When Jim woke up, it was by degrees. 

First, he became aware of the steady pulse map of his own heartbeat; and then the slightly overstarched sheets that seem to be common to every damn hospital facility he'd ever been in. 

But then there was the warm weight on his side, and the grip that someone had on his shirtfront. He swallowed, and knew that it must still be the dream; or he did actually die. 

But no; Jabilo M'Benga was running a tricorder over him and Leonard McCoy was pretending to be asleep on his shoulder while the other doctor lingered there. "Wh-What happened?" 

"Len, quit faking and yell at our captain." M'Benga flicked Leonard in the ear, and Leonard grunted, and Jim knew he wanted to start cursing up a storm. 

"What happened is that you tried to kill yourself so that you wouldn't give the Romulans the information they wanted. What happened is that Spock and I had to synthesize a virus and a cure that would wipe out the Romulans just enough to get them to deal. What happened is that you tried to leave me--tried to leave us all--and I am so angry at you for doing that." Leonard's knuckles were white on the grip he had of Jim's shirt. 

"How did...?" 

"Any longer, and I would've lost you." Leonard whispered, voice powerful but strained. 

Jim took a deep breath, swallowing, "Not a big loss, B--" 

Jim wheezed as Bones thumped him in the stomach, raising his head to stare, wild-eyed and infuriated, at his captain. "Don't you even damn well _try_. Not with this shit. Not after the month you just put me through. You know what the loss was, Jim? It was my best friend; it was my port in a storm; my fucking soulmate, you idiot, and I didn't know who'd taken you for a goddamn week! You and I are connected, you infant: you couldn't have told me it was the Romulans--" Jim was pulling away, or trying to, and Leonard had enough of that; aching in a way he didn't know he could, "No! You listen, and you listen good: I love you. I have for too damn long. You could have told me from the get that you and I were whatever the fuck we are, and I would've put everything I had into loving you right then and there--" 

"No. No, you wouldn't've--" Jim cut himself off, swallowing, and a muscle in his jaw twitched, his eyes wide and angry. He wanted to get out of this conversation--Leonard wasn't about to let him. 

"What makes you think--?"

"You were heartbroken, Leonard! You hated even the idea of love! It took three months before you stopped treating every woman that flirted with you like she had the plague and if I'd tried, you would've hated me even more than you do now!"

"No! Jim, listen to me! I don't hate you now! I don't, and I didn't a month ago. I was angry, sure, but I think I lost the ability to hate you 'round the time you carried me off that damn shuttle." Leonard hand his legendary hands on Jim's shoulders, squeezing tight enough he was suddenly scared he'd bruise Jim. He loosened his grip, sliding his hands until they were cupped around Jim's jaw, a measure to keep Jim looking at him as much as it was because he couldn't make himself stop touching him. "You know me...You've always known me...I should've been tipped off there, but," Leonard shook his head, "you're a star, Jim; all heat and light and I was the void that no heat or light could survive. If you got too close, I'd ruin you." 

Jim took a breath, licking his lips and biting down just a little to keep himself from letting any tears fall. "Past-tense." 

Leonard smiled, just a quirk of the corners of his mouth, really, but it was there, "You got close enough that I couldn't be a void." Leonard leaned in slowly, and Jim's breath caught, but he didn't fight as Leonard kissed him, so softly it was barely a kiss. 

Jim whimpered, gripping Leonard's upper arms and trapping him into a deeper kiss, something real and vibrant that Jim would never be able to write off as a dream. 

Leonard broke off too soon, but leaned their foreheads together, sharing air as he rubbed circles over the hollow under Jim's jaw with his thumbs. "Clear?" 

"For now." Jim agreed, and pulled Leonard in, wrapping around him as much as he could, his hands desperate over Leonard's back and sides, clinging like he was about to torn away. Leonard knew that feeling well; burying his mouth into Jim's shoulder and closing his eyes as he breathed Jim in, his heart screaming with how close he'd come to losing him. 

"I love you, kid." 

Jim's eyes were wet, and if Leonard felt teardrops on his skin, he didn't mention a damn thing, because his own eyes were this close to leaking, too. Jim only let himself be laid back down when Leonard came with him, curling up around him as much as he dared and soaking in every kiss Jim pressed into his hairline like it would take away the pain. 

In the quiet, Leonard let himself be Leonard instead of Jim's doctor, and the steady heartbeat he could feel at Jim's throat was beckoning him to taste the pulse against his lips, eyes closed and sighs lazy as he pressed his mouth there at the base of Jim's throat. 

"Bones..." 

Leonard chuckled, "Never thought I'd be so fucking relieved to hear you say that..." 

"I love you." 

Leonard hugged him, brushing his fingers over the healing wound in his chest as he timed his breathing to match Jim's. "Sleep, you need to heal more, Jim. Sleep now." 

"I don't want to." 

Leonard groaned, spreading his hand down against Jim's stomach, "Are you hungry?" 

"I haven't eaten properly in weeks..." 

"What can I get for you, Jim?" 

"I'm almost scared to try eating..." 

"Tell me what you want." 

"A sandwich." 

Leonard hummed, nodding, and kissed Jim's forehead. He slid away, stretching with a groan as his bones cracked. He threw a look back at Jim, smiling before he stepped through the privacy screen, finding Nyota, Spock, Sulu, and Chekov waiting there, wringing their hands. "He's awake. And thick as ever." 

Nyota impacted his chest hard enough to almost fall over. "Thank god...thank you." 

He wrapped her in a hug, chuckling. "I couldn't let him go, either." 

"Doctor, I have already filled out for you the standard disclosure arrangements to Starfleet for your relationship with the Captain. All that is left is your signatures." Spock reported. 

Leonard looked at him, knowing that it was a gift. "Thank you." 

The Vulcan inclined his head, and Leonard moved off from them, going to get Jim the sandwich he needed. Chekov, Sulu, and Spock followed him, asking in low voices about Jim's wellbeing as Leonard balanced a tray on his palm, laying a sandwich, a juice, and a pudding out neatly. 

Nyota had crept through the privacy screen, sitting on the edge of Jim's bed, leaning on her hand on the other side of his hip. "Hello, our winsome idiot." Nyota murmured, bending over to kiss his forehead. "You scared us." She sighed, smoothing his blankets over his chest. Her hands were restless, reaching up to pull her fingers through his hair next. 

"Hey," Jim grinned at her, reaching up to catch her wrist. "Bones put me back together. 'M okay..." 

"You and Bones..." she murmured, a glint in her eyes and a smirk on her lips, "I approve. Vehemently." Jim's eyes wouldn't meet hers, and Nyota tilted her head slightly. "Jim..." 

"Don't read my mind, Ny." 

"Oh, no, Jim: this is not reading your mind. It's reading your heart and your past. You two are meant for each other, Jim: don't fuck this up." 

"I don't want to do this, because I'm going to fuck this up." Jim told her, voice tight. Nyota held his head between her hands, rubbing her thumbs under the corners of his eyes. 

"You know him, Jim." Nyota whispered, "You know him in ways that not even Jocelyn did." 

"How the hell do you know that?" 

"Because I have eyes." Nyota laughed, "You should see his face when you get his coffee perfectly right, or when you finish his thoughts. It's relief, Jim: you understand him. You know him. And it's a miracle to him." 

Jim looked away, and Nyota sighed, stroking his cheek. 

"You're an idiot." 

"Apparently a winsome one." 

"Jim, I love Spock, but you and Leonard change my definition of love." 

"Ny--" 

"Give yourself a damn chance." Nyota hissed. She sat up as Leonard came through the privacy screen, carrying a tray and looking a little harassed.

"Nyota..." 

She stood up, taking the tray and setting it on the small table beside the bed, wrapping her arms around him again. "Good luck. Masochist." 

Leonard snorted, "I regret nothing." She grinned, going up on tiptoes to kiss his cheek. She turned and left, and Leonard smiled tiredly at Jim. "She knock some sense into you?" 

Jim didn't reply, opening his arms and pouting slightly, pulling Leonard in with that alone. Leonard laid against his side, under his arm, tipping his head back to kiss Jim sweetly. "You're here...you really wanna be here?" 

"I'd rather we were doin' this in your quarters and you weren't hooked up to three different regens, but the cuddlin' 's nice." Leonard slurred, sounding sleepy. "Had nightmares 'bout you...every night. Back on Tarsus. I remember..." 

Jim swallowed, kissing Leonard's hair with all the tenderness and agony he possessed. "I'm sorry." He whispered. 

Leonard shrugged, eyes still closed, "Got you back. Have you now. It'll never happen again." 

Jim chuckled, rubbing through Leonard's hair to his quiet, happy sigh. Jim ate his sandwich one-handed, the other buried in Leonard's hair, where it was meant to be. It wasn't long until Leonard had pulled him into sleep, too. 

_"I want a divorce!" Leonard shouted._

_"Shut up, you love me." Jim giggled, wrapping around him._

_"You're a terrorist."_


End file.
